About Me
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Move over James Patterson, Stephen King, JK Rowling and EL James, there’s a new kid in town. Well, maybe not so new, but on the way up and I wanted you to be the first to get a chance to know. I am on my way to the top and I will not stop until I’ve become the world’s most famous author. Sounds crazy, right? Okay, maybe it is, but here’s a question, if you wanted to be known for your fiction writing, why would you stop before you were the world’s most famous author?
When you think of it like that, setting the top as your goal is the only thing that makes sense. Obviously, you'll become an NYT bestseller along the way, and make movie deals, and all the rest, but why settle for just half the enchilada? Even if you never quite reach everybody, why not invite one more person to buy your book, one more reader to find out if you have what it takes to win them over! So, that's why I decided, I'm going to be the World's Most Famous Author!
So, what would it actually take to become the world’s most famous author? I intend to find out. Stephen King and JK Rowling are tied at 673,000 Google searches for their names monthly, to give you some idea, that’s about 5x what famous author James Patterson got, and more than double what the inimitable Mark Twain collects monthly. EL James doesn’t even really register with just 90,000 searches, but they all pale in comparison to the master of the Attention Economy, the great orange one. Are you ready to be sickened? Donald Trump’s name is searched 16,000,000 times a month, over a dozen times more frequently than Rowling and King combined, while Jesus Christ is only searched just under 250,000 times each month.
I am sure there are a lot of factors involved in search volume, for instance, not too many who claim to follow him search “Jesus Christ” on Google with any frequency, since their source material likely doesn’t require a name search, and Mr. Trump’s recent victory is, no doubt, skewing the odds a bit. Meanwhile, the outgoing president, Obama, is still pulling a million and half searches a month. My campaign to become the world’s most famous author has a two step plan so far.
The first step, you are a part of right now, write a post called, “I’m Going to be the World’s Most Famous Author” step two also involves any of you that want to be involved. I’m daring you to find out if I’ve got what it takes. The first of my scifi series, “The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Saving the Multiverse” Is going on 99 cent countdown special starting tomorrow, and here’s where you come in! I dare you to prove me wrong. See if I’ve got what it takes! Get the book and read it, let me know what you think. I think you’ll love it, but some of you won’t and that’s okay.
Download the book here!
When you’ve finished reading the whole book, and please, not before, leave me a review. After all, I’m on my way to becoming the World’s most famous author and your opinion matters. I’d give you the book for free, but I know two thirds of you wouldn’t finish it, so for less than a McDonald’s coffee, you get in early on the trending literary conversation of the next decade, Mark R Morris Jr, World’s Most Famous Author. Some of you may want a piece of this fame in the making, and I’m prepared to share!
Here are a couple of ways you can get in on it. Get yourself an Amazon Associates account, share my books on your blog and earn commissions! Bam! Can’t beat that, you get to be part of the rise of the World’s Most Famous Author, and you make some money to boot! Some of you will see the benefit in connecting with me and for those, I’d love to do an interview for your blog, or podcast, just message on the form at the top of the page!
For those who think I’ve lost my mind, well, I’m out here trying to earn money as a writer, because my stage directing career took a dive, so thanks a lot Captain Obvious, now, either help me get ready for the big time, or stop bothering those of us who are working to make me the World’s Most Famous Author! Comments? I know you’ve got one! Leave it! I’ll love it! Find me on Facebook, with the button below, get your own Amazon Associates account here! And I’ll be looking for all of you on my many world tours as the World’s Most Famous Author!
When you think of it like that, setting the top as your goal is the only thing that makes sense. Obviously, you'll become an NYT bestseller along the way, and make movie deals, and all the rest, but why settle for just half the enchilada? Even if you never quite reach everybody, why not invite one more person to buy your book, one more reader to find out if you have what it takes to win them over! So, that's why I decided, I'm going to be the World's Most Famous Author!
So, what would it actually take to become the world’s most famous author? I intend to find out. Stephen King and JK Rowling are tied at 673,000 Google searches for their names monthly, to give you some idea, that’s about 5x what famous author James Patterson got, and more than double what the inimitable Mark Twain collects monthly. EL James doesn’t even really register with just 90,000 searches, but they all pale in comparison to the master of the Attention Economy, the great orange one. Are you ready to be sickened? Donald Trump’s name is searched 16,000,000 times a month, over a dozen times more frequently than Rowling and King combined, while Jesus Christ is only searched just under 250,000 times each month.
I am sure there are a lot of factors involved in search volume, for instance, not too many who claim to follow him search “Jesus Christ” on Google with any frequency, since their source material likely doesn’t require a name search, and Mr. Trump’s recent victory is, no doubt, skewing the odds a bit. Meanwhile, the outgoing president, Obama, is still pulling a million and half searches a month. My campaign to become the world’s most famous author has a two step plan so far.
The first step, you are a part of right now, write a post called, “I’m Going to be the World’s Most Famous Author” step two also involves any of you that want to be involved. I’m daring you to find out if I’ve got what it takes. The first of my scifi series, “The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Saving the Multiverse” Is going on 99 cent countdown special starting tomorrow, and here’s where you come in! I dare you to prove me wrong. See if I’ve got what it takes! Get the book and read it, let me know what you think. I think you’ll love it, but some of you won’t and that’s okay.
Download the book here!
When you’ve finished reading the whole book, and please, not before, leave me a review. After all, I’m on my way to becoming the World’s most famous author and your opinion matters. I’d give you the book for free, but I know two thirds of you wouldn’t finish it, so for less than a McDonald’s coffee, you get in early on the trending literary conversation of the next decade, Mark R Morris Jr, World’s Most Famous Author. Some of you may want a piece of this fame in the making, and I’m prepared to share!
Here are a couple of ways you can get in on it. Get yourself an Amazon Associates account, share my books on your blog and earn commissions! Bam! Can’t beat that, you get to be part of the rise of the World’s Most Famous Author, and you make some money to boot! Some of you will see the benefit in connecting with me and for those, I’d love to do an interview for your blog, or podcast, just message on the form at the top of the page!
For those who think I’ve lost my mind, well, I’m out here trying to earn money as a writer, because my stage directing career took a dive, so thanks a lot Captain Obvious, now, either help me get ready for the big time, or stop bothering those of us who are working to make me the World’s Most Famous Author! Comments? I know you’ve got one! Leave it! I’ll love it! Find me on Facebook, with the button below, get your own Amazon Associates account here! And I’ll be looking for all of you on my many world tours as the World’s Most Famous Author!
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Good morning fair reader! Well, the promotion is going
slowly but surely. With no list and no leadup, I managed to generate 25
downloads on the first day, and I’m looking to triple that today. So, in the
interest of giving you some ideas of how to move your book from flatline toward
the first sale, here is the anatomy of my campaign.
I start with
Massplanner as my hub
I’ve mentioned it before but it’s the central pin of my
entire operation. It allows me to be promoting while I’m writing this. It gives
me the ability to create a network of “people” that share my posts and links.
It’s great.
Massplanner is an automation dashboard that works
differently than any other automation tool. It allows for the use of multiple
accounts to share content across a wide variety of social media outlets. I use
five Facebook surrogates, accounts I have logins for that allow me to post my promotional
information through them. (I didn’t tell you to make a second Facebook account,
just so we’re clear, wink wink)
These accounts are also linked into blogs, Google plus,
Pinterest and more. When I set up a campaign, one post might be shared by five
people across a half dozen platforms.
So, here were my
results from yesterday
First, you need to hack your Amazon traffic. You can’t KNOW
how many people visit your sales page, Amazon will not tell you. But, if you go
to Bitly.com you can create a custom, shortened (great for Twitter) trackable
link that will count not only the number of hits, but the sources of the traffic.
Use your Bitly link exclusively when promoting to allow you to calculate your
promotional CTR and conversion rate.
·
I shared my promotion in 130 places yesterday,
including about 100 Facebook groups for book promos, and readers.
·
From that, I got about 85 clicks on my link, so
2/3 of the groups (approximately, no way to know this for sure) earned me at
least one click, I’m sure some were more effective and some got 0.
·
Out of 85 clicks on my link, I earned 25
downloads, or about a 30% conversion rate, again, not bad for starting from
zero.
Promoting to lists of
locations will help you fine tune your strategy
I create promotional lists of groups, profiles and pages that
I want to post to, that way I can see which parts of my campaign are the most
effective, so that I can repeat them again and again. The lists that don’t bear
great results can be edited and tweaked to improve the conversion rate. I also
make sure I am serving the same content to all of the lists of locations to
make sure I am comparing apples to apples.
So, how long does all
of this take?
The set up is the most time consuming part. Gaining access
to profiles you can use, then inputting them, and adding them into your promotional
groups on Facebook, Google Plus, etc, is the most time consuming part. Once
that’s done, campaigns take very little time to set up and zero time to run.
·
Use images whenever possible and mix them up. I
use book covers, but I also create illustrations of various aspects of the
story. Any program you use to create ads or memes will work for this, I use
photoshop.
·
Make your text fun, funny and engaging. Lure the
reader in. Make them want to comment, or click on your link. One line that gets
some good response for me, is to guarantee double money back on free downloads.
It always gets comments and clicks.
·
Whatever tool you use to automate your campaign,
input your posts and choose the locations to send them to, then start it up and
get ready to respond.
Make sure you engage
with the audience.
If someone comments, or shares your promotion, like their
comment, or post. Comment in return. Ask questions, engage them in
conversation. Posts with conversation are more likely to catch attention and
will rise to the top of the group newsfeed.
·
Use your surrogate accounts to like and comment
on each other’s posts. You can start a conversation with yourself if you’re
creative, making it appear there is even more interest. This always draws a
crowd.
·
Be polite, even if someone is rude. The audience
is watching your response, if you manage to defuse a heckler, they will be on
yours side. If someone is harassing, simply delete their comments, rather than
responding in kind.
·
Commenting and liking also makes posts appear in
your notifications on Facebook, giving you even better tracking over the
conversation.
Don’t be afraid to
claim credit for rankings!
Amazon has split the rankings between free and paid
downloads. Don’t lie, but when you reach the top ten in ANY category, screen
capture it and promote it! People like success. They like things that are
perceived to be popular and the more you promote your success, the more others
will be willing to share and promote it too. They want to be associated with
winners. Be one!
One more tool that I
used on this campaign to date
Sign up for Copromote. It allows you to boost a Tweet or
post so that other users can retweet, or share your content. It expands your
audience and gains you new followers. I’ve only used the free version, but I
have a friend that swears by the premium version as well.
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
It was a long day, but I think I made a dent in some much
needed promotion. So, here’s what I’ve been up to. I finally came to the
conclusion that to move into a better paying platform ( Gum road, or Payhip) I
needed to leverage the audience building power of Amazon to sell enough books
to make the transition. For whatever reason, people will spend money on Amazon,
even at a slightly higher price, than on these other platforms. So, I’m moving
full bore Amazon.
At the moment, I’m promoting my Origin Dime Chronicles
series, a collection of three novellas that all add up to one novel sized
collection, The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Saving the Multiverse. Through the
magic of Kindle select, I have two types of promotion at my fingertips and I’m
using them both. I can only use one for each book, so here’s what I determined
to do. First: a 2 day give away of “Jacked” (part one of The Complete Beginner’s
Guide to Saving the Multiverse)
Then, a Kindle Countdown deal on the whole enchilada!
Starting Thursday, The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Saving the Multiverse,
formerly titled All Jacked Up until I realized there was too much competition
for that name and it also said nothing about my story, for 99 cents! The hope
is that the bite sized sample of the 80 page JACKED will lure readers into the
larger purchase of The Complete Guide, for a cash price.
Since Amazon stopped promoting free books, even when they
hit #1, getting a book to paid download status, is the key to getting ranked.
Also, the Kindle Countdown program has its web pages, where the countdown
volumes are listed separately for readers to find. So, what’s the benefit? Same
as the benefit of being sold in a small book store, less competition for
eyeballs!
So far, I’m up to #8 free in Time Travel scifi and hoping to
break #1! Then, when The Complete Guide moves to Kindle Countdown, I’ll shift
the second novella into free give away mode to keep the traffic coming. The
final piece of the puzzle, book three, will not go up for discount or free
giveaway, making the novel length “omnibus” containing all three novellas, the
best deal and hopefully a sure fire seller. So, while I may not make much off
the 99 cent sales, hopefully, I will move up in the rankings.
I’ll keep you posted! Thanks for tuning in. Be sure to share
my blog if it interests you and I love comments! Like to learn more about any
phase of self-publishing? Message me at MarkRMorris2@gmail.com
with your questions! Thanks!
Jacked Part of The Complete Beginner's Guide to Saving the Multiverse is currently on free giveaway on Amazon,
today and tomorrow! This is leading up to an Amazon countdown deal on
the whole first book in the Origin Dime Chronicles! So, get the first
novella and take a free sample. You're going to love it! Then come back
on Thursday to get the novel-sized portion for 99 cents!
When I write fiction, I do it to change the world, and the Origin Dime Chronicles is no exception. Sure, it's filled with twists and turns, and laughs and gasps, and great heroes and cool tech, but it's also going to make you think and feel and reconsider your own existence in new ways. So, why not check it out? You might just find your new favorite author right here on a blog you thought was just about freelance writing!
When I write fiction, I do it to change the world, and the Origin Dime Chronicles is no exception. Sure, it's filled with twists and turns, and laughs and gasps, and great heroes and cool tech, but it's also going to make you think and feel and reconsider your own existence in new ways. So, why not check it out? You might just find your new favorite author right here on a blog you thought was just about freelance writing!
Subscribe to:
Posts
(Atom)